


The Men That Don’t Fit In

by sophrosynic



Category: due South
Genre: M/M, dSSS 2015, due South Seekrit Santa Challenge, i don't even know what this is
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-15
Updated: 2015-12-15
Packaged: 2018-05-06 21:23:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,858
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5431256
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sophrosynic/pseuds/sophrosynic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes, Ray Kowalski could feel his heart breaking, and he didn’t know what to do about it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Men That Don’t Fit In

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Queue](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Queue/gifts).



> Any and all spelling, grammar and butchered characterization errors are mine and mine alone. This is for the due South Seekrit Santa fic exchange. I hope whoever requested this isn't too disappointed!

Sometimes, Ray Kowalski could feel his heart breaking, and he didn’t know what to do about it.  
  
It wasn’t the kind of heartbreak that he was used to. And Ray was used to plenty of heartbreaks. They came in a dozen different forms, each one more terrible and potent than the one that came before. College. Marriage. His job. His parents. Vecchio’s very existence. His mind threw the images at him one after the other, relentless in the frigid cold of the Arctic, snapshots and flashes of his life and the frayed ends that he hadn’t tended to, linked by the commonality of their incompleteness until he nodded off into a restless sleep.

Some nights, the winds of the tundra howled in the distance, and Ray would close his eyes and feel a surge of solidarity. The sounds were as eerie as they were reassuring, a reminder that an emptiness as vast as the one he was traversing was also screaming in protest, asserting its existence, raging against the dying of the light that disappeared as quickly as it came over the horizon.

Other nights, it was quiet. On those nights, Ray lay awake, straining his ears against the nothingness only to find the steady thrumming of his heartbeat instead. The old ticker, as his dad used to call it, still ticking away, the noise its own minute protest against the world that he was still here. Still ticking, still standing.

\- -

Ray Kowalski was fleeting. Benton Fraser was not.

 _Constable_ , he reminded himself.  _Constable Benton Fraser_. The name didn’t simply lend itself to reassurance as much as it commanded it. Ray had seen it plenty of times before, the effect that it had on people. _I’m Constable Benton Fraser, of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police._  How many times had he listened to Fraser say those words, watched the person he was speaking to instantly calm down, instantly lean into the fabled promise of reassurance that Fraser seemed to exude.

Ray had never been able to figure out if it was Fraser’s job title, or his position, or just  _him_. Him. Benton Fraser. Not Constable Benton Fraser, not Constable Benton Fraser of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, but just him. Fraser. His partner Fraser. His partner Fraser who thought he was attractive and licked his lips and couldn’t always meet Kowalski’s gaze, his eyes skittering away whenever Ray stared at him a little too long, a little too intently.

Ray didn’t beat around the bush when it came to himself. He couldn’t exactly afford to anyhow, not with him and his multitude of issues. So he didn’t. He laughed, waved himself away self-deprecatingly, and tried not to think too hard about the way his chest seemed to constrict whenever he thought about himself being steady in that way. Of quietly plodding along, resolute in himself or even a part of himself.

\- - 

“How much longer will it be, Fraser?”

Fraser looked at him, momentarily confused. “I’m not quite sure what you’re on about, Ray,” he replied, looking back down at the small portable camp stove on which he was boiling water for their customary morning oatmeal. “Are you asking how much longer it is until breakfast? In which case, considering that we’ve been on this journey for upwards of about six months, you should be well aware--”

“You know what I mean, Fraser.”

Fraser looked at him, his eyes and expression unreadable. “Our journey.” 

“Adventure,” Ray corrected him. Journey was one of those words that made his chest constrict. Journeys were predictable. The same. Quiet plodding along, the promise of something steady with a fixed destination, not fleeting in the least.

Fraser furrowed his eyebrows, and the look on his face made Ray’s chest ache in a different way. He was still bundled up in his sleeping bag, watching Fraser get up before the morning light and bustle around their camp with a briskness he was sure was listed as an official requirement in the RCMP beginner’s manual, a carry-over from the days of yore when men like Fraser didn’t simply wander around the Northwest on a wish and a promise as they were doing at that very moment.

Another moment passed before Fraser broke the silence. “How do you feel about this, Ray?” he asked, and Ray could tell Fraser was choosing every word carefully, treading softly and cushioning his footfalls, like Ray was a scared and skittish forest animal who might bolt into the bush at any moment.

Ray looked at him intently, and Fraser dropped his gaze down to stare at his weatherbeaten hands instead. Ray's chest was constricting again, on top of the ache, the two feelings coalescing into something that was making it difficult for Ray to draw a proper breath. He tried to remember what Fraser had told him when he was teaching him how to swim on that sinking ship.  _Bloom, close, kick ‘em in the head_. The thought of it made him smile, and the feeling in his chest abated somewhat as he regularized his breathing, each inhale and exhale steadying out carefully.

Fraser chose that moment to look at him, and caught the smile before Ray could stop looking like some kind of dope. “Ray?” he asked, his voice sounding unsure and unsteady for the first time. At that moment, Ray burst out laughing, unable to help himself, and Fraser looked more confused than before. "You were pulling my leg, weren't you?" he asked hesitantly.

“Has anyone ever told you that you’re a delight, Fraser?” Ray replied, stifling his giggles into the fur lining of the parka he was wearing under the sleeping bag. Fraser looked confused and mildly indignant.

“Well, were you?” he asked instead, more insistently.

“Were I what?” Ray asked, and the look of indignation on Fraser’s face deepened, forcing Ray to swallow his laughter. “Okay okay, I’ll be serious now,” he said, sitting up and putting his hands up in a gesture of surrender. “I wasn’t pulling your leg Fraser...it was a serious question. How much longer am I gonna have t’be up here, do you think?” he asked, waving his hand to gesture at the emptiness at large. “You can’t find a decent cup of coffee here, if you haven’t noticed, and the pizza’s practically non-existent.”  
  
Fraser followed his gaze and looked out at the emptiness. “I didn’t realize that you were on a time crunch, Ray," he replied. The words weren’t mean, but the implication was clear. Ray quieted down and looked at Fraser again, with the same intentness. And sure enough, Fraser looked away. Moments later, he glanced up, then looked away again. “You’re homesick,” he said finally, still not looking at Ray.  
  
“Not particularly," Ray replied, shaking his head. He wasn’t sure what answer he himself would give, if Fraser happened to ask him outright, and contented himself with playing the guessing game instead, reveling in the fact that for once, it wasn’t him who was unsure of something.  
  
“You have a pressing matter to attend to at home that you’ve just remembered. A family matter of some sort.”  
  
“No, my parents are set for a while and Stella’s...well.” Nobody needed to talk about that particular situation right at that moment.   
  
“You miss your job.” Fraser tried again.  
  
That made Ray pause. He thought for a moment, then nodded. “A little. But don’t tell me you don’t miss your job too, Frase. I mean, you had a good thing going for you there, didn’t you?”  
  
Fraser looked at him then, holding his gaze properly for the first time since they’d started the conversation. “I did,” he replied, smiling a ghost of a smile. “Or at least, I thought so. But I’m glad you share the opinion, Ray, that I had a good thing going.”  
  
“We,” Ray corrected him, only just remembering that Fraser had hardly been alone in Chicago. He'd been there too. “We had a good thing going.” And there it was again, that constricting feeling in his chest, battling with the ache that was taking on a warmth he hadn’t noticed at first.  
  
“Yes," Fraser admitted. “We did.”  
  
They fell silent after that, the camp stove still going, the water finally starting to boil. “I don’t know why I asked you that,” Ray said suddenly, and Fraser looked at him. “I don’t--”  
  
“No apologies necessary, Ray,” Fraser replied, waving it away. “It’s a natural question to have, considering the nature of our task at hand. Our objective is something that has effectively been consigned to the status of myth over the years, and for all we know, it might not even be a reality, simply the fictitious ramblings of a drunk frontiersman. It might very well be that we are looking at the possibility of spending the rest of our waking days wandering this frozen wasteland, engaged in the fruitless pursuit of a dream and nothing more. Your line of questioning should hardly be a surprise, Ray,” he said as he smiled. It wasn’t his regular smile, but a wry one that Ray wasn’t used to seeing. “I don’t imagine you’d want to spend the rest of your waking days wandering the Arctic with me. Not even if the treasure we sought was something far more worthwhile than what we're searching for now."  
  
They fell into a silence then, and the moments dragged on yet again. Ray swallowed, and drew a deep breath while resolutely ignoring the tightening in his chest. “It...it wouldn’t be the worst thing, y'know,” he said quietly, shrugging. He was trying on the words for size, but he knew Fraser had heard him, knew it from the way the tips of his ears went the slightest bit pink and the way his smile went from wry to warm, warm enough to melt the Arctic ice on which they were resting. “Like that one poem, what’s the one? The one with the Laisythingymajigies and Cyclops.”  
  
“Ithaka,” Fraser replied, and Ray fell back into his sleeping bag, beaming. He knew which one it was, of course he knew, but Fraser didn’t need to know that he wasn’t any old college dropout, not just yet anyway. “Are you suggesting then, that the Hand of Franklin is our very own Ithaka?”  
  
Ray shrugged. “If that’s how you want to think about it. You know me, Fraser. I’m not one for all these books and things, I leave that stuff to you.” He rolled over and buried his face into the warmth. “Wake me up when there’s food, will ya?”  
  
Fraser murmured his response, and Ray pretended to sleep. He tried not to think about how his chest was still constricting whenever he thought about being here still, maybe being here always, steadily plodding through the snow and the cold, sometimes behind Fraser and sometimes ahead of him, but always single file. Always pressing onward, covering each other’s footsteps. Digging that groove ever deeper into the face of the emptiness, the most visible sign of permanency that Ray might ever know in his life.  
  
He closed his eyes and wondered if he could learn to live with the breathlessness.

**Author's Note:**

> The poem RayK fumbles on purpose is _Ithaka_ , by C.P Cavafy. The title of the work comes from another poem, this one by Robert Service, called _The Men That Don't Fit In_. I might have referenced that last one a _little_ too liberally in some places, but ah well.
> 
>  If you want to shout at me for this, you can find me on [tumblr](sophrosynic.tumblr.com).


End file.
